From the Pastor
Dear CUCC Community & Friends,
Please receive this letter of heartfelt gratitude from the Rev. Joy Alford Allridge:
"My beloved Church Family:
Thank you for supporting me and for all your gifts to me. I am not only talking about your tangible material gifts but I am also talking about your sustaining love and support of me- just as I am.
Thank you for always being a safe place for me. I always know that as soon as I walk through those CUCC church doors, I will be greeted with various smiles, hugs, and handshakes. Thank you for always making me feel important and welcomed.
Thank you for allowing me to be myself and for encouraging me to go after the things that I have wanted but was intimidated by.
Thank you for all of the prayers that you have said for me during the years I have been with you -thank you, even for the prayers that I did not know about.
Thank you for taking the time to watch me grow while holding my hand along the way and for understanding my inexperienced errors.
Thank you for listening to me and being interested in my life and my ministry. Thank you for helping me to gain new perspectives.
Thank you for letting me be a part of something that is much bigger than myself.
Thank you for showing me that trust and integrity really do exist in the world and are worth finding in a church.
Thank you for teaching me never to settle, but rather to take nothing less than what God is trying to give me in life and ministry.
I want to thank you for always being involved and showing me what passion looks like.
Thank you for being my role model and my rock in this very unstable vocation called ministry. Thank you for calling me.
Thank you for a beautiful ordination service and an incredible reception. Your work on that amazed me.
Know that I always want to “let my life speak.”
Lastly, I want to thank you for the silly things. Thank you for all of the laughter at my silly sermon jokes. In fact, thank you for sitting through my sermons that went on way too long when Steve was on sabbatical.
Thank you for letting me teach your children in confirmation and to learn from them.
Thank you for always giving me jokes that make me smile for days and enter my sermons later.
Thank you for all of the remarkable love you all have shown my family and me. We are forever grateful and could never thank you enough.
I know I would not be who I am today without the love and guidance from you, my church. You’re a good, good church. It’s who you are. I am so proud and yet so humbled to be a part of you in ministry now and forever, even when Prism becomes its own church. You will always remain a part of me and I will hold my prayer stick as I pray for you for years to come.
Heartfelt thanks - Peace and love,
Joy